Thursday, October 30, 2008

Advice & Reminders from World Can't Wait Newsletter

Especially good advice and reminders from World Can't Wait latest newsletter:

What will happen in the next week, and how people feel about it, is unpredictable, and could shape the political terrain for good, or bad. Those of us how who have worked intently over the last few years to stop the Bush program, need to be out among the reservoir of people who have put so much hope in to Obama over the next week, learning, listening, and challenging people to stick to what it is they wanted -- and end to the endless wars and the disasters Bush represents.

YOUR GOVERNMENT ADMITS TORTURING PEOPLE:

On February 5, 2008 CIA Director Michael Hayden stood before Congress and admitted CIA officers aterboarded three detainees. Two days after Hayden's admission, U.N. High Commissioner fFor Human ights Louise Arbour classified waterboarding as torture.

On April 9, 2008 ABC News reported that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, John shcroft, Colin Powell, and George Tenet met regularly in the White House to discuss and approve arious forms of torture-including waterboarding-for use on detainees. On April 11, President eorge W. Bush himself admitted approving these meetings, saying: "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

As of December 2007, according to Amnesty International, the U.S. was known to be holding 275 etainees in Guantanamo Bay, ("Gitmo") Cuba. All but a handful of these detainees have never been harged, and have never received a trial. The vast majority of these detainees were turned over to the U.S. by warlords; they were not captured on the battlefield. Even the U.S. military only haracterizes only 8% of these detainees as Al-Qaeda fighters

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